Armageddon was a milestone. It was a movie that defined our version of Space adventure. But what if I told you, that the events lined up in the entire movie were just impossible?
The film is plagued by so many flaws (168 errors as for now) that NASA uses it to train its astronauts on how not to screw up a space mission. NASA uses The Armageddon in one of its modules, for the wrong reasons. In a movie spanning 150 minutes, 168 inaccuracies would mean more than one flaw every minute.
It was as if, the more errors you could point, the more competent you’d be considered at NASA. The makers of the movie didn’t bother to consult someone dealing with cosmology and space science. Either that or the producers were like “Screw science! We’re gonna go about blowing up giant asteroids in deep space”.
For all we know, to blow up an asteroid the size of the one in the film, the energy that would be released from the explosion would be equivalent to the energy released by the sun. Not to forget that the explosion would be radioactive and might as well send our Earth to an endless Nuclear Winter.
Thanks Bruce Willis, your heroics have just led to the extinction of us humans.
But let’s not forget that the movie was solely made to stir up an emotional pot-boiler. Armageddon was made to be an emotional roller coaster full of sound, fury, and heroics, signifying nothing much in special. It gives you bouts of emotional ups and down, builds up the intensity until the protagonist saves the day.
Armageddon at its time was a masterpiece with all of its fire and fury. However, I would categorize Armageddon as an emotional drama rather than deeming it as science fiction.
The only scientific truth the movie stuck to was the fact that asteroids existed.
Apart from scientific blunders, the movie is entertaining. I can put it on any day and shush my nerdy self into simply enjoying a bunch of people saving Earth from a giant asteroid.